The sprint distance swim for the Triathlon I will be competing in is 750m, and I decided today would be a nice day to swim the distance straight. I figured, since I usually swim about double that, that the swim shouldn't be too hard...just the swimming without stopping would be the challenge.
When I swim usually, I swim for 1 hour and switch strokes/focuses because I easily get bored with a stroke and lose motivation and allow my head to tell me I'm too tired to continue. In order to keep my head from convincing the rest of my body that I'm tired I switch about every 200 yards to a new stroke or a different focus in a typical workout until I reach 1400 or 1500m I tend to think in matters of yards because most standard pools are yard length, but the pool at Lifetime technically is 25 meters...though the standard measuring rules for swimming pretty much says if it isn't 50 meters in length it's measured in yards... so I guess my pool at lifetime would be like 35 yards long or 25 meters long, but whatever makes no difference to me, thirty laps, forty laps, sixty four laps all the same to me, I don't differentiate the slightly longer length of my current pool.
Anyway- that was a slight tangent from what I was intending to talk about- I decided that I would see how in my current state I would fare in a 750m swim without stopping. I switched off every 100 yards freestyle and breastroke. I did this because from watching the swim leg of the triathlon in June, a lot of people couldn't swim freestyle the whole time due to bunching up of people and not being able to get into a rhythm. So, I figured I would switch between freestyle and breastroke. It took me about twenty minutes to swim a 750. It could have been faster than that but I'm not really sure because I had to wait a bit before actually getting into the pool (who would have thought the Friday of Labor Day weekend, in an almost totally empty gym entirely, the pool of all places would be packed) so I think I got in around 5:30 and i got out of the pool about about seven minutes to. A very exciting realization for me.
Yes, the swim leg is only one portion of the triathlon but the fact that I could complete the swim leg equivalent in a relatively fast pace without even feeling winded or tired in the slightest is a great sign. That means I will be able to hopefully swim the first portion and still have plenty of energy reserve for the bike and the run leg. I am very, very buoyed today by this realization. With still nine months to go, and every week adding distance or resistance to build my stamina... I am getting fairly confident that my triathlon just might be an attainable goal after all!
So, I wanted to forewarn the handful of readers that I have... I have next week off from work, and I'm going to spending a lot of time paring down the mountains of stuff that I have accumulated over the years...and I have a feeling that with a 8 hours a day to be with my thoughts I know a lot of things are going to start to surface so I have a feeling I will be blogging quite a bit next week.
~Millie
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